Rifkin’s Poison Pen

In a frankly appalling effort to use America’s bioterrorism scare to push his agenda, anti-technology zealot Jeremy Rifkin penned a Baltimore Sun op-ed arguing that genetic improvement technology “being used commercially in the fields of agriculture, animal husbandry and medicine today is potentially convertible to the development of a wide range of pathogens that can attack plant, animal and human populations.” World Health Organization Director Gro Harlem Brundtland recently called genetically improved crops potential “major lifesavers” in impoverished nations. But to technology hater Rifkin, they’re a “poor man’s nuclear bomb.”